Awe Sparks Prosociality in Children.

Rooted in the novel and the mysterious, awe is a common experience in childhood, but research is almost silent with respect to the import of this emotion for children. Awe makes individuals feel small, thereby shifting their attention to the social world. Here, we studied the effects of art-elicited awe on children's prosocial behavior toward an out-group and its unique physiological correlates. In two preregistered studies (Study 1: N = 159, Study 2: N = 353), children between 8 and 13 years old viewed movie clips that elicited awe, joy, or a neutral (control) response. Children who watched the awe-eliciting clip were more likely to spend their time on an effortful task (Study 1) and to donate their experimental earnings (Studies 1 and 2), all toward benefiting refugees. They also exhibited increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an index of parasympathetic nervous system activation associated with social engagement. We discuss implications for fostering prosociality by reimagining children's environments to inspire awe at a critical age.

Persuading republicans and democrats to comply with mask wearing: An intervention tournament.

Many people practiced COVID-19-related safety measures in the first year of the pandemic, but Republicans were less likely to engage in behaviors such as wearing masks or face coverings than Democrats, suggesting radical disparities in health practices split along political fault lines. We developed an "intervention tournament" which aimed to identify the framings that would promote mask wearing among a representative sample of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. from Oct 14, 2020, to Jan 14, 2021 (N = 4931). Seven different conditions reflecting different moral values and factors specific to COVID-19-including protection from harm (self), protection from harm (community), patriotic duty, purity, reviving the economy, threat, and scientific evidence-were implemented to identify which framings would "win" in terms of promoting mask wearing compared to a baseline condition. We found that Republicans had significantly more negative attitudes toward masks, lower intentions to wear them, and were less likely to sign or share pledges on social media than Democrats, which was partially mediated by Republicans, compared to Democrats, perceiving that the threat of COVID-19 was lower. None of our framing conditions significantly affected Republicans' or Democrats' attitudes, intentions, or behaviors compared to the baseline condition, illustrating the difficulty in overcoming the strength of political polarization during COVID-19.

The spatial representation of leadership depends on ecological threat: A replication and extension of Menon et al. (2010).

Since humanity's first steps, individuals have used nonverbal cues to communicate and infer leadership, such as walking ahead of others. Menon et al., (2010) showed that the use of spatial ordering as cue to leadership differs across cultures: Singaporeans were more likely than Americans to represent leaders behind rather than in front of groups. Furthermore, they showed that threat priming increases the representation of leaders at the back. We replicate and extend these findings. We draw on cultural tightness theory to explain variability in mental representations of leadership, advance the spatial precedence hypothesis that leaders are generally represented in the front, use a large cross-cultural sample to compare different cultural dimensions, and employ alternative operationalizations of threat. We show that leaders are generally represented in frontal spatial positions across 25 countries and in different types of teams. We also find that cultural tightness and ecological threat (pandemic, warfare, and predation) lead people to represent leaders at the back (Studies 1-5). Mediational models show that ecological threat triggers greater desire for tightness and norm-enforcing leaders, which in turn leads people to represent leaders at the back (Study 4). Likewise, in tightly regulated work-teams, leaders are thought of as being seated at the office's back desk (Study 5). Thus, we converge with Menon et al. that different cultures have different mental representations of leaders and individuals who face threats show greater preference for leaders at the back. Additionally, we demonstrate that cultural tightness is the key cultural predictor of mental representations of leadership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

No guts, no glory? How risk-taking shapes dominance, prestige, and leadership endorsement.

Risk-taking can fuel innovation and growth, but it can also have devastating consequences for individuals and organizations. Here we examine whether risk-taking affords social-hierarchical benefits to risk-takers. Specifically, we investigate how risk-taking influences perceived dominance, prestige, and the willingness to endorse risk-takers' leadership. Integrating insights from costly signaling theory and the dominance/prestige framework of social rank, we theorized that risk-taking increases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of prestige, but decreases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of dominance. However, we also hypothesized that risk-induced perceptions of dominance do translate into leadership endorsement in competitive (rather than cooperative) intergroup settings. We tested these hypotheses in four studies involving different samples, methods, and operationalizations. In Study 1, participants performed an implicit association test (IAT) that revealed that people associate risk with leader positions, and safety with follower positions. Study 2 was a longitudinal field survey conducted during the September 2019 Israeli elections, which showed that voters' perceptions of politicians' risk-taking propensities prior to the elections positively predicted perceived dominance and prestige as well as voting behavior during the elections. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that people are willing to support risk-takers as leaders in the context of competitive (as opposed to cooperative) intergroup situations, because perceived dominance positively predicts leadership endorsement in competitive (but not cooperative) intergroup settings. We discuss implications for understanding the social dynamics of organizational rank and the perpetuation of risky behavior in organizations, politics, and society at large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Climbing the ladder or falling from grace? A threat-opportunity framework of the effects of norm violations on social rank.

'Social norms keep anarchy at bay, yet norm violations are omnipresent. Although norm violators are generally rejected from higher-ranking positions, they sometimes rise up the ranks. We advance a threat-opportunity framework to understand how contextual factors shape norm violators' downward or upward mobility in social hierarchies. The contextual factors we identify pertain to attributes of the actor (violator), the observer, and the cultural context, which influence whether norm violations are construed as threats or opportunities. Norm violators rise up when their actions promote group goals, but they fall from grace when their actions obstruct observers' own interests or culturally reinforced goals. We offer a review of the literature, which supports the threat-opportunity framework. We close by suggesting future research directions.

Cultural Collectivism and Tightness Moderate Responses to Norm Violators: Effects on Power Perception, Moral Emotions, and Leader Support.

Responses to norm violators are poorly understood. On one hand, norm violators are perceived as powerful, which may help them to get ahead. On the other hand, norm violators evoke moral outrage, which may frustrate their upward social mobility. We addressed this paradox by considering the role of culture. Collectivistic cultures value group harmony and tight cultures value social order. We therefore hypothesized that collectivism and tightness moderate reactions to norm violators. We presented 2,369 participants in 19 countries with a norm violation or a norm adherence scenario. In individualistic cultures, norm violators were considered more powerful than norm abiders and evoked less moral outrage, whereas in collectivistic cultures, norm violators were considered less powerful and evoked more moral outrage. Moreover, respondents in tighter cultures expressed a stronger preference for norm followers as leaders. Cultural values thus influence responses to norm violators, which may have downstream consequences for violators' hierarchical positions.

The art of influence: When and why deviant artists gain impact.

Some artists rise to fame, while others sink into oblivion. What determines whether artists make an impact? Considering deviance in its sociohistorical context, we propose that artists whose work deviates from their own previous style (intrapersonal deviance) and other artists' styles (interpersonal deviance) gain greater impact than nondeviant artists, as long as deviance is directed toward a progressive style. A preliminary study showed that in western cultures nonrealistic styles are considered more progressive than realistic styles (Study 1). Five more studies provide evidence for the effects of the two types of artistic deviance on several aspects of impact (i.e., perceived influence of the artist, valuation of the artwork, and visual attention to the artwork). First, individuals considered artists who deviated from their previous style more impactful than artists who consistently followed a single style (Study 2), effects that were stronger when artists transitioned from a retrogressive style to a progressive one (Study 3). Second, artists who deviated from their contemporaries' style were considered more impactful than artists who followed the predominant style, effects that were stronger when artists strayed from a predominant retrogressive style by using progressive means of expression (Studies 4 and 5). When the historical context prevented observers from inferring the progressiveness of the deviant artists' expressive means, artistic deviance enhanced perceived impact regardless of the means by which the artists deviated (Study 6). Supporting our theoretical model, the effects of intrapersonal and interpersonal deviance on impact were mediated by perceived will-power (Studies 3, 5, and 6). (PsycINFO Database Record

When is a lie acceptable? Work and private life lying acceptance depends on its beneficiary.

In this article we show that when analyzing attitude towards lying in a cross-cultural setting, both the beneficiary of the lie (self vs other) and the context (private life vs. professional domain) should be considered. In a study conducted in Estonia, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden (N = 1345), in which participants evaluated stories presenting various types of lies, we found usefulness of relying on the dimensions. Results showed that in the joint sample the most acceptable were other-oriented lies concerning private life, then other-oriented lies in the professional domain, followed by egoistic lies in the professional domain; and the least acceptance was shown for egoistic lies regarding one's private life. We found a negative correlation between acceptance of a behavior and the evaluation of its deceitfulness.

Are the Powerful Really Blind to the Feelings of Others? How Hierarchical Concerns Shape Attention to Emotions.

Paying attention to others' emotions is essential to successful social interactions. Integrating social-functional approaches to emotion with theorizing on the reciprocal nature of power, we propose that attention to others' emotions depends on concerns over one's power position and the social signal conveyed by the emotion. Others' anger signals attack-information relevant to high-power individuals who are concerned about the legitimacy or suitability of their position. On the contrary, others' fear signals vulnerability-information relevant to low-power individuals who are concerned about their unfair treatment within an illegitimate hierarchy. Accordingly, when power roles were illegitimately assigned or mismatched with one's trait power, leaders were faster at detecting the appearance of anger (Studies 1 and 2), slower at judging the disappearance of anger (Study 2), and more accurate in recognizing subordinates' anger, whereas subordinates were more accurate in recognizing leaders' fear (Study 3). Implications for theorizing about emotion and social hierarchy are discussed.